The present invention relates to armature winding machines, and, more particularly, to machines for winding the armature wires of an electric motor to a hook member ("tang") of a commutator bar and deforming selected hook members for later identification during processing.
Although armature winding machines are widely used, a system for marking and later identifying commutator hooks for further processing is not yet available. Prior attempts to identify hooks requiring special processing have involved manual identification. However, manual identification may be inefficient and expensive.
The conditions required for fusing commutator hooks vary depending upon the number of armature lead wires that are passed around a given hook. The fusing conditions must be tailored to the hook's winding configuration if a satisfactory fusion joint is to be formed. For example, a hook with a single wire passed around it will require a different electrode displacement, electrode force, and electric current application than a hook with two wires passed around it. The hook wrapped with two wires may require additional electrode force to produce a cohesion joint of satisfactory quality.
Winding machines typically attach two armature lead wires to selected hooks during the termination stages of armature winding. At the instant a hook is wrapped with two wires, the armature has a precise, known angular position. Thus, it would be possible to transfer a wound armature to a fusing machine while in a known angular position. The hooks wrapped with two wires could be recognized by their angular position and appropriately processed. However, such a solution requires costly changes to the transfer solutions between the winding and fusing machines.
It would be desirable to provide a winding machine which deforms a hook requiring special processing, such as a hook wrapped with two wires, so that the hook may be identified during later stages of processing. It would also be desirable to provide a method for identifying such a deformed hook in the fusing machine for performing special operations.